


The Wild Ritual

by Stealth_Noodle



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Bittersweet, Dancing, Dry Humping, F/F, Lapdance, Mid-Canon, POV Weirdo, Porn, Semi-Public Sex, Video Game Mechanics, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 20:04:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1441093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stealth_Noodle/pseuds/Stealth_Noodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth accepts a second date to Paulownia Mall with her most intriguing guest, this time while Club Escapade is open for business. (Sometimes, dancing really is just sex with your clothes on.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wild Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> In my quest to use all of FeMC's fanon names, she's Makoto this time.

When Makoto returns from the bar, she wears the mask of Dionysus, divine ecstasy rooted in carnal delight. Her cheeks are flushed. "I got us both soda," she says over the noise, handing Elizabeth one of her pair of drinks. "Is that okay? The bartender says he's not giving adult beverages to anyone without an adult ID."

Elizabeth accepts, tipping the glass slightly to clink the ice cubes together. Their gentle percussion is drowned out entirely by the music. "Of course. I look forward to experiencing this evening just as you do."

Cheeks a little darker, Makoto smiles and taps her glass against Elizabeth's. The resulting chime is just barely audible over the din but clearly an important piece of the ceremony, a summons for the spirits of unfettered hedonism.

Together they sip, and Elizabeth savors the effervescent chill on her tongue. With the low, strange lights and pulsing music, this is the sort of place where anything goes immediately to one's head; Elizabeth can almost feel the bubbles jostling their way down her throat to disperse inside her. As she lowers her glass, her gaze catches on the intense eyes of a woman sitting at the bar. "Who is that person all in yellow?" she asks.

Makoto follows her finger. "Oh, she's... never mind, there's no way that's not going to end up weird." Before Elizabeth can follow up on such a fascinating certainty, she adds, "How about a quick tour?"

Elizabeth follows close, chest to back, though this isn't the school, and it shouldn't matter if anyone notices her. The torrent of music soaks every aspect of the club: the floor hums faintly, voices rise in instinctive competition, and Makoto's hips sway slightly as she walks, cupped by the rhythm. Elizabeth wonders if the rules of this place would allow her hand to slide down Makoto's back and imbue this faint ghost of dance with tactile life.

Uncertainty keeps her hand at shoulder-blade-level as Makoto leads, gesturing at each point of interest. "So we were just at the bar, and that's the dance floor, obviously. You can't really drink and dance at the same time, so you see people go back and forth a lot. There's a lounge area upstairs, too, but it's usually pretty empty unless there's a party or something. I think this place isn't popular with people who just want to sit around all night." 

Makoto pauses for another sip. When she resumes speaking, there's a peculiar intensity in her voice and in the glance she slides back over her shoulder: "For most people who come here, dancing is the point. Everything else just leads up to it."

The dance floor's population is sparse but energetic, and indeed much less sparse than the population at the tables. "Is this the usual way of things, then?" Elizabeth asks. She can almost feel Makoto's heartbeat from behind, or maybe just an echo of the drums conducted up from the floor. "To drink first, and then abandon oneself to the delirious ecstasy of the dance?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Makoto's tour ends at one of the empty tables tucked under the shadow of the stairs. It's no longer necessary to cling to her for direction, but Elizabeth's hand lingers until Makoto turns to face her. "So if you want, we can hang out here while we finish our drinks."

"A wise plan," Elizabeth replies. When she sets her glass on the table, spots of cool condensation remain on her gloves. "It wouldn't do to rush in unprepared. Why, I've heard rumors of rituals forbidden to anyone who cannot perform the rites perfectly, on pain of death."

Makoto laughs. "A club's not like that. It's still just dancing, you know? You let your feelings move you."

"Ah, I see. Some gods demand nothing of their worshipers but sincerity, which is far more difficult than mere precision. It's no wonder that most would choose to ease into such a ritual."

"That's... definitely one way to look at it."

Cluster by cluster, more pilgrims arrive and pause at the club's entrance to slough off layers of clothing. Some shed so much that Elizabeth wonders if they intend to strip down to bare skin and orgiastic abandon, or further still to nothing but bones. This is a place with rules at a tangent to the rest of society; until she learns them, anything is possible.

The dance floor's population swells as the music picks up speed. Soon nearly every body in the club has been stirred into motion, arms raised and feet wild and hips twirling. Elizabeth scarcely remembers to set her drink down before she is caught up as well, like a small pond subject to the same forces that command the tides. 

Before she can ask, Makoto doffs her jacket, sets down her glass, and joins in, matching Elizabeth whirl for whirl. What little space exists between the table and the wall, they fill. The motions and the sweetly satisfying strain in Elizabeth's muscles are much the same as when they danced on the wrong side of the door, but everything is different now that they have been granted passage inside. The lights, the noise, the smell of the crowd, the haze of smoke, even the lingering fizziness on Elizabeth's tongue—every detail is woven tight and thick with meaning. Through it all runs a thread of frantic, intoxicating joy that must be amplified a thousandfold within the mesh of dancers.

The space is small, and their movements are wild. Sometimes their hips bump and their flailing arms catch. Each collision is curiously intense, like the soft fulfillment of pressing close to Makoto's back condensed into a jolt that leaves Elizabeth craving another. Strange, how the bottom keeps falling out of satisfaction.

When they slow for breath, Elizabeth muses, "How very odd... I felt united in desire with the crowd, yet I wonder if anyone sharing the experience could explain what compelled us." She holds Makoto's gaze to ask, "What is it, do you think, that we all came here to seek?"

Makoto's flush must not be from exertion alone; it deepens as she breathes more evenly. Her lips move through a few unvoiced false starts, then still as she molds her expression to Nigi Mitama's. "I think part of it's just about feeling alive," she replies, eyes on the dance floor. "And now, with the Nyx Cult and everything..." Her teeth briefly catch her lower lip. "It makes me really happy to see people dancing here. Everyone out on that dance floor right now wants to live."

Of course no one here has stripped down to bones; every song is a paean to flesh. Elizabeth lets its siren call pour into her unstoppered ears and vibrate up through her feet, but she is not yet ready to surrender wholly to it. Beholding the sea of dancers from afar has its own breathtaking appeal, one that she is not yet prepared to exchange for the perspective of one of the fish. "May I observe them a while longer?"

"Yeah, of course." Makoto settles into the chair claimed by her jacket. "If you have any other questions, just keep asking."

Elizabeth nods and sips the dwindling pool of her soda. At the bottom it tastes less like itself, more like water. "Why are the lights pink?" she asks, then gasps with epiphany. "Oh, of course! Surely this is sympathetic magic to arouse the flow of blood and bring the same color to the cheeks. Red would work as well, but might also encourage the spilling of blood. How cleverly the club's creators have chosen!"

Makoto blinks, then grins. "Sometimes they do rainbow lights."

"I hope they do so tonight. I'm quite giddy with the prospect of what colors our cheeks might turn."

A response is lost under a sudden swell in the music. The beat falls from a furious storm to a deep, driving throb, and the dancers draw together as if sinking into honey. Their hips rock so seamlessly together that their silhouettes are of centaurs with dual torsos.

Elizabeth is transfixed. "Oh my, this must be one of the fertility rites I've read so much about!"

Makoto snorts soda through her noise. "Not exactly," she says, once she's used Elizabeth's handkerchief to wipe her face. "I don't think anyone's actually trying to be fertile right now."

Indeed, the barrier of clothing remains, though some of the dancers move as if friction might make short work of it. One of the most exuberant pairs stumbles toward the doors, only to hesitate with coats half-retrieved, as if uncertain how the peculiar magic of the club will fare across the threshold. "But it's still about life, isn't it?" Elizabeth ventures.

"That's part of it, yeah." Makoto sucks on an ice cube, letting its corner peek between her lips like a tiny jewel of a tongue. She crunches it away before meeting Elizabeth's gaze. "Anyway, if you're ready, maybe we could, um..." As her voice fumbles, the anxious vulnerability about her eyes hides behind the shield of Apsaras. She tries again: "Would you like to dance with me?"

The throbbing of the music reverberates inside Elizabeth, strongest of all between her thighs. Makoto extends a hand, palm up: an offer of deliberate contact, stripped of pretense. Satisfaction is already in freefall and far out of sight, and the only way to chase it is to leap down into the unknown.

Some choices are only the aftershocks of greater ones. Elizabeth accepts without hesitation and lets herself be led, Makoto's fingers clasped tight around her glove. They leave Makoto's jacket slung over the back of the chair. Like passengers on an elevator, their path is inevitable, but the journey is a dark mystery.

Even before they reach the dance floor, Makoto's hips begin to sway again. Perhaps now it would be seemly to touch them, but one of Elizabeth's hands is captive, and the other doesn't move quickly enough. Makoto slips a meter away, fingers sliding free, and regards Elizabeth with low-lidded eyes. 

Elizabeth should be adrift in a sea of sights and sounds, but Makoto is like the face of the moon on the waves. No matter how enticingly they gyrate, the other bodies are slight and dim, ghosts that fade whenever Elizabeth glances away. Makoto shines.

Makoto's hips roll in figure-eights, echoing eternities. Every motion exaggerates her curves, transforms her pulse by pulse. When her arms rise above her head, slaves to a different gravity, her shirt pulls loose from her skirt. The flesh that peeks through the gap undulates through light and shadow.

Though Elizabeth is still naïve to the ways of this world, these motions are far older than it, shining through its fragile veneer like distant, ancient stars. She raises her own hands and grasps at the air, seeking hold of the rhythm. When she falls in sync, they move like marionettes strung from the same bar. Other dancers drift near, but Makoto eludes them as easily as water.

With each driving beat, Makoto whittles away the space between them. Elizabeth's skin tingles with something like an itch, and only contact will soothe it. She does her own clumsier whittling until her chest is once against pressed to Makoto's back. The feeling is warm, familiar, unsatisfying.

On the bang of a drum, Makoto's backside arches against her pelvis. Elizabeth makes a sound she didn't mean to, but the music swallows it up. She was wrong; contacts burns more than it soothes. Her hands curl around Makoto's sides, over the bare skin glistening in the pink light, as if to stop her from gliding away. When Makoto grinds back against her, Elizabeth drives her own hips forward. They are two fires stoking each other, blazing toward an impossible convergence.

It is exquisite, this tension. Whenever she feels that she will surely burst, Elizabeth only finds herself drawn thinner and tighter: Zeno's Paradox, as illustrated by a man on a rack. Her racing heart will never explode; her red-hot skin will never ignite. Eternity is a razor's edge, whetted to insubstantiality.

The beat of the music flutters faster, like a bird taking flight. Makoto twists her upper body until her blood-dark cheeks and dilated eyes are visible. Her tongue flicks arrestingly over her parted lips. Her voice is muddled under the song, but her mouth is easy enough to read: "Let's go upstairs."

The journey is a mystery, but the destination is a promise wrought in iron. Elizabeth has no intention of stopping now.

Hand in hand they ascend, leaving the crowd behind. In truth, the club could melt away without attracting Elizabeth's attention. As wondrous as this world is, it seems now no deeper than a mirror, and dark without Makoto's reflection.

The world above is nearly an inversion of the one below, compact and deserted, washed bright and pink from proximity to the lights. Every breath tastes less of sweat and perfume, more of dried spirits and stale tobacco. Up here even the music is somewhat softer; such heavy sounds must prefer to stay low to the earth.

"Nobody hangs out up here anymore," Makoto says, "especially not on a Friday night." She peers over the edge of the balcony at the shining sea of hair with bodies writhing and jittering beneath it. Strange, what a difference perspective makes. "Like I said, most people just come here to dance."

Elizabeth lets herself pout. "So you've already had your fill of dancing tonight?"

"Hey, I never said that." Makoto looks up slowly, clasping her hands behind her back. Just for a flicker, Valkyrie is the steel in her spine. "I was planning to keep dancing. Just... in a different way."

The intrigue that dripped from her pause lingers in the hazy air. Elizabeth strokes her chin as if to rub it in. "A more intimate, secret ritual?"

Makoto's blush returns in full bloom. "That's—yeah. Exactly."

"Ah, I'm already quivering with anticipation! Please, begin my initiation whenever you are ready."

The next sound to come out of Makoto is low and choked. She clears her throat a few times before saying, "Okay, first you need to sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

An intriguing dance indeed, that demands one partner take a seat. The only ones available are on a pair of long, cushioned sofas suffused with the smell of old tobacco. As Elizabeth goes to sit in the center of the longer one, Makoto calls over the music, "Um, not right there. It'd be kinda creepy."

The enigma of the creepy seat fails to be compelling enough to distract Elizabeth from her greater purpose. Opting instead for the shorter sofa, she lets herself slide on the shiny leather of the cushions. Her dress hikes up almost obscenely as she settles in. "Will this do?"

Nodding, Makoto stands directly in front of her, stance wide, hands clasped behind her back. "Perfect. Have you ever heard of a lap dance?"

Elizabeth considers. "Dancing while maintaining a lap would be a grueling test of balance and stamina. Are we to challenge each other?"

Makoto laughs. "No, it's more about me dancing on your lap. You're not allowed to touch me until I say you can. ...I'm not really selling this, am I?" Another laugh, this one uncharacteristically nervous. "It's very, very intimate."

Apsaras speaks more fluently with her body than with her mouth; as Makoto gropes for words, every twitch of her muscles is alive with desire. Patches of her blouse are translucent with sweat.

They are both passengers together, hurtling deeper and deeper into the dark, past all familiar stops. The destination has never been unclear; Makoto paged through the Compendium under Elizabeth's inquisitive gaze, and only afterward, with the sea of her soul deliberately stocked, issued her invitation. Yet the way is still steeped in wonder, spiced with uncertainty.

"I'm still quivering," Elizabeth replies. "Please, share such intimacy with me."

Makoto's lips curve into a smile that, if not quite at ease, projects a playful confidence. Her hands unclasp and cross over her hips, which sway slow and wide, like a metronome at half time to the music. As she flows closer, her fingertips skim up her sides.

Hypnosis, Elizabeth has heard, can be induced by something bright and round arcing rhythmically before the eyes. Though she no longer peers out through the face of Dionysus, Makoto is still the moon, swinging low, shining silver. The night pales around her; Elizabeth is entranced.

The fabric of Elizabeth's dress bunches higher on her hips as Makoto straddles her, knees on either side of her thighs, shins on the neighboring cushions, skirt draped wide to create a warm mystery in the gap between them. The rush of contact is intoxicating, even through the mesh of their tights. The promise of bare skin tantalizes.

Elizabeth tips her head back to watch as Makoto pulls at the root of her ponytail, then shakes her hair loose over her shoulders. Elizabeth's fingers twitch with the desire to comb through it, but this dance requires the balance of temptation and control. When Makoto's fingertips trace Elizabeth's cheek and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, the rest of her skin tingles jealously.

The bright rush of the music falls into a swoon, with a low, deep burst of a beat followed by steady pulses. Makoto takes a deep breath.

Her tights rub against Elizabeth's as she begins to writhe, arching her back in slow motion. When she unfolds upward, Makoto glances over either of her shoulders, then takes Elizabeth's hand and sets it on the ribbon at her throat. Elizabeth obediently tugs and watches a shiver pass through her as the bow comes undone. Makoto sets Elizabeth's hand back on the sofa, then opens the top button of her blouse.

Her hips roll in a long, slow circle, never quite touching Elizabeth's. Her arms twine above her head and pull the flesh of her torso taut after them. The hem of her shirt rises above her navel, letting pink light wash over the soft swell of her abdomen. This close, Elizabeth can see downy little hairs, as soft as fog. "May I touch?" she asks.

Makoto lowers her arms on a shuddering exhale. "Not yet." Her voice is husky, perhaps regretful. Another button opens, exposing the jut of her collarbone, before she begins to move again.

"These rules are quite brittle, aren't they?" Elizabeth splays her hands flat against the cushion. "One must take great care not to break them."

"I promise I'll make it worth your trouble," Makoto replies. Slowly, like a petal weighed down with dew, she bends backward. Her shirt is dragged up around her ribs, and her breasts shift beneath it with each undulation of her spine. Her hips rock from side to side in time with the music. Beat by beat, the ribbon slithers closer to freedom from her shirt collar.

Every time she breathes hard, her bared belly twitches. Making her breath hitch is as simple as sustained eye contact. Elizabeth wonders if she too swells with heat and tension every time she inhales, like a hot air balloon straining toward flight.

Another button, and Makoto's shirt falls open to just below her bra. Now it's much more apparent how tension and gravity reshape her breasts as she moves, how she might set them free if she leaned back just a little farther. When she twists sharply enough, the exposed flesh jiggles. How thrilling it would be, Elizabeth thinks, to poke ripples into it. She envies the ribbons as it finally slips free and skims over Makoto's chest on its way down.

Makoto returns from a deep backward bend and drapes her arms over Elizabeth's shoulders. The connection of bare skin, slick with sweat, is like an electric pulse; Elizabeth glides at a shuddering tangent to her breaking point. Gaze locked, eyes dilated, Makoto dips her hips in time with the music but still does not bring them low enough to touch. Her breasts nearly brush Elizabeth's chin, quivering with each breath.

A quick shuffling behind Makoto's eyes erects the façade of Succubus. Unsubtle, perhaps, but this has proven no place for subtlety. Her mouth is dark and hungry.

Elizabeth is naïve to the ways of this world, but some ways transcend worlds. She tilts her head and parts her lips: acceptance and invitation. Makoto's tongue laps broadly before pushing inside. 

Their mouth form a sloppy seal, broken and remade on each breath. Kissing is fantastically intimate, a total commandeering of the mouth that replaces breathing and eating and speaking. How strange, that desire transforms violation. The weight in Elizabeth's lap confines her to the sofa yet arouses no desire to escape; indeed, she is delighted when the knees on either side of her squeeze inward. She digs her fingertips into the cushion.

Makoto's eyes are closed, but Elizabeth keeps hers open. Perhaps this bends some yet-unspoken rule, but she wants to watch the light filter through Makoto's hair. Every time their chins tilt, the view shifts. The vibration of Makoto's lips and the short puffs of her breath suggest speech, but the words are lost in thrumming and wetness.

Their meaning reveals itself when Makoto grinds down against the top of Elizabeth's thigh, where her dress has bunched up. The mystery is solved, but the skirt remains coyly in place. A tendril of sweat-curled hair blemishes the view of Makoto's scarlet cheeks, but still there are rules.

"Please continue," Elizabeth says to the question in Makoto's eyes. "How does this bewitching spectacle end?"

Makoto's weight centers on the jut of Elizabeth's hip, pressing her deep into the cushions. It is a delicious feeling, to be so captured. Perhaps this is what it feels like to have a past and a future, twin pressures that perpetually sharpen one's focus.

The inside of Elizabeth's skin is scraped and stretched into a parchment of nerves. The rush of blood transforms. Wet, engorged anatomy needs a new name, something thicker and earthier on the tongue. Her throbbing heart is merely a muted echo of her cunt.

The rest of Elizabeth spreads like water, fingers and legs and lips apart. If she cannot touch, she will take in, endlessly. The tongue in her mouth, the scent of smoke and sweat in her nose, the warm light falling through the holes in her eyes, the rocking of the body atop her like the music vibrating up from below. Dampness seeps through her tights. She will leave some fleeting mark on this world, like the one Makoto is leaving on her.

"If I'm not mistaken," Elizabeth says when Makoto's face tips aside for a groaning breath, "your body is building to the crescendo of an orgasm. Please alert me when it begins."

The shiver that passes through Makoto passes into her, as well. With every motion Elizabeth expands indefinitely, her edges scraped soap-bubble-thin. Still she does not snap. The excruciating tension is nearly normal now, like the stillness that masks a planet whizzing in reckless circles around its star. Perhaps she should prefer never to burst; perhaps the lingering ache would be sweeter than the fleeting satisfaction.

Makoto's hand slides beneath their skirts and up between Elizabeth's thighs, where it grinds like flint against steel. "Come with me," she whispers urgently, and makes up Elizabeth's mind.

For an instant Elizabeth is all flesh, all cunt, all fire and devouring. The backs of her eyelids are a supernova starfield, but she opens them as quickly as she can to watch Makoto's face. Lips parted and quivering, eyelashes fluttering, whole body convulsing with each breath—such a magnificent world this is, that contains such wonders in the brief shape of a girl.

Makoto deflates, trembling, and sinks against Elizabeth. Touching must be allowed now, so Elizabeth embraces her. They are a completed circuit, softly electric. Through them both pass diminishing aftershocks, as if their nerves are whispering in Morse code.

What, Elizabeth wonders, does one say at a time like this? She strokes Makoto's hair and whispers, perhaps not loudly enough to be heard over the music, "You truly are remarkable."

With a deep, shivery breath, Makoto sits up enough to button her shirt. It takes her three tries to align the holes. The sea of her soul is especially fluid right now, her every facet permeable, but she is mostly, malleably Orpheus. "I wish," she begins, but what unfolds from such a beginning must overwhelm her; after a pause she says instead, "It'll be the Dark Hour soon. I don't want to worry anyone, so I guess I should walk you home now, huh?"

Below, the dancers are still dancing. The glint of light on eyes suggests that their descent from the lounge draws some attention, but only fleeting; everyone here tonight seeks the same thing, but in an intensely individual way. Only the woman all in yellow holds them in her gaze while Makoto retrieves her jacket.

Beyond the doors, the mall is nearly empty. A few red-faced youths are gathered around the fountain, loudly debating whether to catch the next monorail home or go out for ramen first. The only other bodies slump in shadowed corners, jaws slack and eyes empty.

Papers stained with an unlucky emblem still litter the floor. Makoto kicks at them as she walks. The mall has transformed utterly since Elizabeth's first exploration of it—from day to night, from summer to winter, from a place of intersecting lives to one of enticements to death. 

"I truly have been naïve," she remarks as they near the door. Makoto looks puzzled, so she adds, "I assumed that exploring your world with you would allow me to understand it as I do my own. However, the more time that I spend with you, the more I come to realize that nothing so mutable can ever be perfectly known."

Makoto frowns for a moment, grinding a loose flyer under her heel. "I think that's good, though. It means you can change things. If you say, 'This is it, this is the only way things can be,' you're giving up hope."

"I didn't mean to imply otherwise." Elizabeth tips her head apologetically. "My realization was that the unknowable possesses an attraction that the unknown can never hope to match. You've taught me to cherish the insatiable nature of my own curiosity."

Her master has warned her against attachment to transient things, but Elizabeth may have already become a transient thing herself; who she was aligns imperfectly with who she is. How precarious, to wear the masks of both attendant and passenger. It would be foolish to pretend that being suspended between anticipation and nostalgia is the same as floating free.

Reckless and willful, she adds, "Next time, I'd like to visit your room."

Makoto kicks the flyer away and leans in to press a brief, soft kiss to her mouth. This time there's little playfulness, and hunger burns like a coal rather than a wildfire. Their fingers lace tight together, almost in knots; Elizabeth is not the only one balanced precariously.

"Next time," Makoto replies, in the tone of one who understands that their times are numbered, and counting down. Her hand slips away to open the door.

Inside, the elevator continues its ascent, and the master's long nose twitches with a sniff. Elizabeth smiles and resumes her place.


End file.
